Tuesday, January 28, 2014

KFI (640 AM) and KPCC (89.3 FM) were the big
winners in the 64th Annual Golden Mike Awards presented January 25th by the
Radio and Television News Association of Southern California. Each station ran
away with seven Golden Mikes, the highest number of any stations winning awards
for the year.

But that wasn’t the only big news. KNX (1070 AM)
won six Golden Mikes, including Best Newscast Over 15 Minutes. Not to be
outdone, little KCLU/Ventura (1340 AM, 88.3 FM) on the campus of California
Lutheran University won four Mikes including Best News reporting, and
little student-run K-BEACH out of Cal State Long Beach, broadcasting on the HD-3
digital sub-channel of KKJZ (88.1 FM) won a Mike for Best News Public Affairs
Program via their program entitled “Daily 49er News.”

The full list of awards, including the programs
that won the awards, is available on the Radio and Television NEws Association’s
website, rtna.org.

Jarrin Honored by PPB

Dodgers broadcaster Jaime Jarrin, who has done
play-by-play for the Dodgers in Spanish since 1958, was honored with the Art
Gilmore Career Achievement Award presented by the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters
at their monthly luncheon held January 24th at the Sportsmen’s
Lodge.

Jarrin is the second-longest tenured broadcaster
in Major League Baseball. The longest-running? None other than fellow Dodgers
broadcaster Vin Scully (with the Dodgers since 1950), who was on hand to help
present the award.

Jarrin was born in Cayambe, Ecuador and began
his broadcast career t the age of 16. He arrived in the United States in June of
1955 ... and he had never seen a baseball game in his life.

By 1958 he was the news and sports director at
Spanish-language music station KWKW (then at 1300 AM, now at 1330 AM). When the
Dodgers moved to Los Angeles from Brooklyn, New York, KWKW obtained the
broadcast rights and Jarrin began his Dodgers play-by-play career.

The early years of Dodgers baseball for Jarrin
did not include traveling to the actual ballparks. Instead, he would broadcast
what might be called recreations or translations of games by listening to the
English-language broadcasts of the games in a studio. Sometime in the early to
mid 1960s, he began broadcasting directly from the games.

From 1962 to 1984, Jarrin called almost 4000
games without missing any of them during the 22 seasons. The string of games was
broken only when he was put in charge of all Spanish-language radio coverage of
the 1984 Olympic Games.

Today, the Dodgers are carried in Spanish on
KTNQ (1020 AM).

Hull Signing

Longtime broadcaster Dave “Hullabalooer” Hull,
associated primarily with the top-40 heyday of the original KRLA (now KDIS, 1110
AM) will be reading from and signing copies of his book, “Hullabaloo! The Life
and (Mis) Adventures of LA Radio Legend Dave Hull” on Thursday, February 6th
from 7 to 8 p.m. at Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood.

Hull is one of the nicest guys I have ever met
in radio, and he was in some ways a thorn in the side of the jocks at 1960s
competitor KHJ (930 AM), which just couldn’t knock him down in the ratings in
spite of KHJ’s overall dominance. I expect this to be quite a fun
evening.